Kindle Fire 8.9 HD Hands-on

The folks from Amazon unleashed a surprise on everyone this afternoon when they announced both a regular 7-inch Kindle Fire HD as well as a larger truly HD 8.9-inch slate. Today we’ll be taking a look at both but be focusing on the 8.9-inch model and its amazing 1920 x 1200 full HD resolution. Yes you read that right. What’s even better is the amazingly low price so check it out below.

The all new Kindle Fire HD will come in an 8.9-inch size offering, with both a WiFi and AT&T 4G LTE option for those in need. As we mentioned earlier the specs and pricing are very very competitive but lets run through them again. For now we don’t know what version of Android these slates are running, but are looking for answers.

The Kindle Fire HD 8.9-inch offers an extremely vivid, crisp, and colorful 1920 x 1200 full HD IPS display, a powerful TI OMAP 4470 1.2 GHz dual-core processor, 1GB of RAM and 16/32GB of storage. Then you get all of that for just $299. Impressive right? They also have a 4G LTE option from AT&T coming as well that will only be $499. Let’s take a look and compare it a little with the 7-inch HD that was also announced today.

The star of the show here is obviously that display so we’ll basically be focusing on that. The tablet however also manages to be extremely thin at just 8.8mm thick. The full dimensions come in at 9.45″ x 6.5″ x 0.35″ and this time around they’ve added a front facing camera. IF you noticed down on bottom they have micro-USB for charging and syncing, as well as micro-HDMI out options for streaming movies and games to your TV.

The display really is impressive. We’ve seen 1920 x 1200 tablets recently from a few others but on 10-inch devices, not 8.9 tablets. This makes the screen extremely vivid, crisp, clear, and makes reading or watching movies a breeze. Then as you can see from my images below the viewing angles are excellent — and they should be. The IPS panel should make sure you can see great from almost any angle.

As far as hardware the device feels extremely durable and well made, but I could almost compare it to the DROID XYBOARD tablet from Motorola. It has a similar rubbery coat on the rear with a bit of gloss thanks to the aluminum that wraps around back for the stereo speakers and branding logos. On botton is the two ports mentioned above, with the volume rocker and power button being nicely placed on the right side. There’s no micro-SD spots for extra storage, but if you need the 32GB version it will only be $349.

Sadly they wouldn’t let us actually play with the 8.9-inch model and get some hands-on video with it, but given the performance of the new 7-inch HD we have a feeling it will be quite excellent too. Again the all new 8.9-inch Kindle Fire HD will start at $299 and be available in 16/32GB, WiFi, and 4G LTE options all on November 20th. Pre-order it today!